Unlock the mind

Before you can unlock the mind you need to acknowledge that it might be locked. And, how do you find out if it is locked?

The secret is to notice what you think.

Most of the time there is a stream of thoughts running through your mind, dictating how you live your life – and you can follow that stream on autopilot, if you choose. After all, a lot of those thoughts are simply replays of the instructions passed to you by well intentioned people like parents or teachers or pastors.

If you never actually examine the thoughts you live by, you’ll never know whether you’re locked into patterns of behaviour or ways of seeing the world. And, if you’re locked in, what might you be missing out on?

Here are some practices you can use to examine that flow of thoughts.

Morning pages, as described by Julia Cameron in the Artists Way, is one way you can uncover what’s going on in your mind. Another way is to try some form of meditation that allows you to stop all your busyness and watch the thoughts that come into your awareness. Mindfulness is one form of meditation you can try.

Something else you could experiment with is writing down what you do each day and looking for patterns, or pay attention to the words you use in your daily speech. Do you hear yourself saying the same thing over and over? What words are you using to describe the world you live in?

Do you have a tendency to insist on being right? You know – It’s your way or the highway!

It’s such a liberating feeling discovering that something you have always thought was right or true isn’t, especially when it’s a limiting thought telling you about something you can’t or shouldn’t do.